Ajahn Sucitto

Journey to Amaravati

Before dawn, before place comes into sight ,before even the weather gets going,the minibus is trembling, door open, heat blasting over its windscreen. We set off dark and early – 'Beat the traffic' – and Jon, the driver,says we’ll pull in at the Maylands Café –it opens at seven for the men going to workon Hemel industrial estate. Yes, get a fry-up.And after twenty years of monastery porridge,this sounds good. Hot and greasy; faintly illicit.

It turns into one of those grey-wash mornings,but Maylands is warm and steamy with menwho aren’t saying much, in fact nothing at all,as they get their sausages and beans and fried slicedown, and dig through ‘The Sun'. ... Robes, monks –then back to the football.... There’s no juke box now playing Chubby Checker or The Shadows,no cigarette smoke to hint at how a beery adulthoodwould taste, playing darts and allowed to swear.No pin-table like back in ’61, before all this –when I didn’t know that sex would make me feellike a dog chewing gum; couldn’t know whyI’d want to empty myself into something deep.Now there’s just some lonely screengleaming with lights that are running in circlesand changing colours. Ready for the game,but no one playing. Tables are still plastic-toppedand easily wiped; bottles of brown saucehave stood since boyhood days with their mouthsthickly clogged – and the salt shakers,they still won’t give a grain. Some things don’t change.

The waitress is busty, blonde, with coral lips.She steers her tight-clothed curves through the tablesto tilt over me with plates and ‘There y’go, m’love.’Some dumbed nerves start tinkling – like an old catjust stumbled across the keys of a pianoin a back room somewhere – but no one’s judging.Not me, not them. Three chairs stand emptyaround the nun; but no jokes, no stares. She in her stillness, sipping tea.

You only know the season by how denselyall the breathed-out steam mists the window.Summer may offer a ghostly blush, buton these cold days, the glass is fogged, blankas some voiceless soul. Makes you want to drawa smiley face or write on it with a squeaky finger –but still it oozes and runs with tears. Even untouched,the surface wells up – and clear streaks startstreaming down. Peek through their tracksand you'll glimpse the world – out there,taking shape and starting to call. The monastery’s not far.

The hands on the clock twitch to twenty past.Jon pays. We're done; it's time to make a move.Into the day, with each breath drawing it in –to be briefly held, felt, and fully breathed out.Sometime we’ll arrive. At Amaravati –‘Deathless Realm’ they call it: the other shore.But I’m adrift - in a time of work and jokesand raising kids, where philosophies wear down.Just a nod and a wink: enough to point;enough to show me my feet. And this body warm, opening its arms.